The royal natural history (1893) (14598075970)

Identifier: royalnaturalhist47lyde (find matches)
Title: The royal natural history
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Lydekker, Richard, 1849-1915 Sclater, Philip Lutley, 1829-1913 Frostick, W. B., former owner. DSI Brooks, W. T., former owner. DSI
Subjects: Zoology Natural history
Publisher: London and New York : Frederick Warne & Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries



Text Appearing Before Image:
is chestnut-brown, vermicu-latod with blackish lines, and whitisli bars. On the Jiind-neck is a collar of buffywhite feathers, with a black border, forming bands; median and greater wing-coverts with large spots of white edged with black ; throat and breast brown, with FROG-MOUTHS. 85 spots and bars of white ; and the abdomen pale buft. Nothing has been recordedof its habits ; but of the nest of the South Indian frog-mouth Mr. Hume writesthat instead of moss, a few fragments of dead leaves are incorporated, butthe material is chiefly a soft felt-like mass, precisely similar to that used byB. hodgsoni, but greyish white instead of brown. It is a mere pad with a shallowdepression on the outer surface, a broad groove on the base of the nest showingwhere it had nested on the upper surface of an almost horizontal bough. Theegg was white. Mr. Hartert says that the part is formed by the down, taken fromthe powder-downs of the bird itself, and then completed by having the outside %>^lSL:^^
Text Appearing After Image:
GREAT EARED FROG-MOUTH (\ liat. size). interwoven and covered witli bits of bark and lichen, so that the nest entirelyresembles the branch to which it is attached. The nests of B. hodgson i, whichMr. Hume describes, were about three and a half inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch in thickness; the lower surface of the pad, where they werein contact with the branch, having a thin coating of moss. The whole of the nest isa compact, brown, felt-like mass, very soft and downy, and composed, as it appearsto be, of excessively fine moss rootlets, but withal as soft as the fur of any littlemammal. This will doubtless be found to be the powder-down of the bird itself.Owlet Frog- These birds differ from the other frog-mouths in having the Mouths. nostrils situated near the tip of the bill, and being open and prominent. 86 PICARIAN BIRDS. There are no distinct powder-down patches, and the metatarsus is longer thanthe middle toe. The loral bristles are greatly elongated, and give the